The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without a failure.

A machine gun is a firearm designed to fire bullets as long as the trigger is held, as opposed to semi-automatic weapons that require a trigger-pull for each bullet. The first truly automatic machine gun, the water-cooled Maxim, saw action in WWI, helping make that conflict the high-casualty nightmare it would become.